Living History in an Early 14th Century Castle
In the small German village of Kanzach, population 504, a unique project has become reality, the complete reconstruction of a wooden castle with its tower, agricultural houses, furniture and various items from its daily life.
Transvestite Knights: Men and Women Cross-dressing in Medieval Literature
In this thesis, I will look at mainly French and German texts from the 12th to the 15th centuries which deal with the subject of cross-dressers in the decidedly masculine domain of the knight. There are many tales of cross-dressing, particularly of women, but the concept of men dressing as women while jousting, and women dressing as knights, brings up several questions about the clothes, what it meant to be male and female, and how cross-dressing could be viewed on the tournament field.
Bone-Hard Evidence
Raging marauders or heroic warriors? What were the Vikings really like? How did they master a demanding environment? How did they form trading networks and what did they use as trade goods?
The Anna Selbdritt in late medieval Germany : meaning and function of religious image
The Anna Selbdritt in late medieval Germany : meaning and function of religious image Virginia Nixon Doctor of Philosophy, Concordia University, School of…
The Place of Germany in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Books, Scriptoria and Libraries
Scholars in Germany and elsewhere have studied individual instances of this growth in the output of scriptoria and expansion of collections, but no-one, as far as I know, has drawn attention to the impressive scale and character of the phenomenon as a whole.
A King on the Move: The Place of an Itinerant Court in Charlemagne’s Government
I shall suggest here that we should abandon this assumed correlation, and that once we have done so, a very different picture of Charlemagne’s itinerary between 768 and 814, and consequently of his government, emerges.
The Liber Historiae Francorum – a Model for a New Frankish Self-confidence
The Liber Historiae Francorum – a Model for a New Frankish Self-confidence Philipp Dörler Networks and Neighbours, Volume One, Number One (2013) The…
Knighthood in later medieval Italy
There is a clear reason for this general discounting of Italian knighthood in the later Middle Ages. The traditional focus of northern Italian historiography being cities and civic life, knighthood has struggled to find a place in the world of communes and city-states, merchants and markets.
Double sex, double pleasure? Hermaphrodites and the medieval laws
I think the question of how the medieval laws dealt with ambivalent bodies deserves some attention in own right. The more general question is: how did medieval societies deal with experiences that challenged accepted views of what was normal?
That Melodious Linguist: Eloquence and Piety in Christian and Islamic Songbirds
That Melodious Linguist: Eloquence and Piety in Christian and Islamic Songbirds Cam Lindley Cross University of Chicago, December 8 (2010) Abstract “Birds,” writes Albertus…
The Peasant War of Upper Swabia
Here we deal with the situation of Upper Swabia (Oberschwaben, South Germany) of 1525, where in the revolts of the late Middle Ages old law appeared and in the Peasant War both old law and divine law appeared.
Contextualizing Hildegard of Bingen’s Violent and Apocalyptic Imagery
This essay focuses on the graphic and violent language of Hildegard’s visions. I argue that Hildegard drew upon the political and ecclesiastical context in which she lived for her visionary experiences, rather than a fully developed form of salvation history.
Funding cuts could cripple archaeological work in German state
The German state of North-Rhine Westphalia is set to completely cut funding for archaeological research, threatening many projects that look at the history of the area.
What did the Renaissance man wear? Historian recreates outfit from the 16th century
In the sixteenth century an accountant in the German city of Augsburg named Matthäus Schwarz was busy moving up the social circles, and he did it in part by knowing the latest fashions and dressing well. By 1541 he succeeded in becoming a member of the nobility. Now his efforts are being recreated in an experimental research project at the University of Cambridge.
Medieval Germany in America
Do Americans have anything to learn from the history of Germany in the Middle Ages?
The Passions of Achilles: Herbort von Fritzlar’s “Liet von Troye” and his Description of the Passions of Achilles in light of Herbort’s Historical Concept
There once lived in Greece a King named Peleas. He was noble and powerful. He lived in splendor in his castles and in his country. Food and (costly) garments were abundant at his court.
Old English and the lexicography of Old High German
In this lecture I will focus on how Old English affected the early German written record and on the difficulties of its lexicographical description.
Sexuality in the Natural and Demonic Magic of the Middle Ages
Throughout the Middle Ages – especially the later Middle Ages – ideas of magic played a large part in the formation of deviant sexual behaviours and it was believed that magic played a main role in sexual malfunctions and abilities.
Relics and Reliquaries in the Vita Germani Auctore Constantio : the Capsula
It is the sporadic presence of the term capsula in the Vita Germani, and in other texts contemporary to it, which indicates its importance in the history of Christian costume as described by Constantius. In what follows, I shall demonstrate through literary comparisons and historical linguistics how such an affirmation is not, in fact, a contradiction at all.
Why There May Have Been Contacts between Slovenes and Jews before 1000 A.D.
The first documented evidence of a Jewish presence in Slovenia dates from the 13th century, when Yiddish- and Italian-speaking Jews migrated south from Austria to Maribor and Celje, and east from Italy into Ljubljana. This is a good three centuries after the first mention of Jews in the Austrian lands.
Conquest, Contact, and Convention: Simulating the Norman Invasion’s Impact on Linguistic Usage
How do conventions arise? Lewis adressed this in his work Convention via signaling games, a mathematical model of communication where a sender sends a message to a receiver who then interprets it. When we say conventions, we mean by that a system of coor- dinated behavior pairing information states with actions
Contemplating the Evolution of Medieval Double-Entendre Literature
The linguistic composition of the Exeter Book Riddles supports this, and in fact, the genre became a refuge for contemporary colloquial speech which was seen as coarse and lower class within the ideologies of Christianity and Germanic heroism.
The historical basis of Lycanthropism or: where do Werewolves come from?
Werewolves, Lycanthropes or Man-Wolves appear in many German, French and Scandinavian stories. Nowadays there exists an image of these creatures, which combines almost all the aspects of the werewolf-myths around the world, that was brought to us by Hollywood.
Singing the Self: the Autobiography of the fifteenth-century German singer and composer Johannes von Soest
Johannes von Soest (also referred to as Steinwart or Steinwert) was a German singer, composer and poet. He is the author of a vernacular autobiography in couplets which is not only one of the few examples of late medieval German autobiography but also one of the very few surviving autobiographical documents written by a musician in this period.